Month: October 2014

Demons are defined as a source or agent of evil, harm, distress, or ruin. An attendant power or spirit. A supernatural being of Greek mythology, intermediate between gods and men.

Not exactly job resume material so what is our fascination with them?

Dressing up for Halloween or All Hallow Even (All Saint’s Eve) has its origins in the pre-Christian times, thought to be a Celtic custom. People believed that spirits and demons from the underworld and ghosts of dead people could become living beings on the night of All Hallow Even. These demons and spirits could not only harm them but could take them back to the underworld.

If these people had to leave the safety of their homes that night they would dress up as these beings hoping to confuse them and therefore would get to their destination safely.

When I was a kid, Halloween was my most favorite holiday. I loved to spend hours deciding on my costume, and then I had the fun of helping my mother make it.

Then the magic day arrived. I was so excited I couldn’t eat breakfast. At school we made Halloween pictures with black cats, pumpkins, and witches. We sang songs about the holiday. The excitement built until we exploded out the doors at the end of the day.

We had to eat supper so I chocked it down and then put on my costume. We ran from house to house chanting “Trick or Treat”, holding out our pillowcases, watching the treasures be dropped into our bags. Then we’d dash off to the next house, and chant again.

When my mother signaled time was up we would race home to sort the candy. We’d…

Red leaves overhead, Halloween yellow and orange ones crunching under your feet. When we were kids we knew you could try any house with the light on but we preferred the pumpkins with their scary lit-up faces. It showed good intentions, we felt. No one approached the witch’s Victorian mansion complete with a widow’s walk high above the street. And no one went to the dismal bungalow hidden behind from the road by overgrown shrubbery. If you went in there, who would hear your screams? Anyway even the ordinary homes with lights on were maybe not safe. They might not take kindly to little spidermen in red and blue with gelled hair. Or to princesses in their pink dresses and home-made foil crowns.

But the potential dangers or prowling in the dark asking for candy gave our Halloween sorties a thrilling edge. In the…

Once upon a time there was a young boy with a young sister who was lured into a Trap made by three evil witches. The leader of the three was the oldest sister and the leader. You see, they wanted this book which contained an eye right in the middle. A spellbook that was important to them and I’m guessing it’s because it contained spells, mighty powerful ones. The boy’s younger sister was lured by one of the powerful spells and ended up dying alongside her older brother had been turned into a black cat trying to save her. Many years later everything starts to happen again. Dejavu much?

The movie is wonderful and well done. A great Halloween movie to have your kids watch! Funny, scary, entertaining! It’s a movie for children but I’m 21 and I still make time to see the movie every year near Halloween.

A few weekends ago, I had my first experience camping, and I’m not going to lie, I freaked out a little. Okay, maybe more than a little. But I think it was justified.

A small group of us went camping for a couple of days. Thankfully, only one night. We were really in the middle of nowhere. We had to do some serious off-roading to get to this remote location. We even had to break out the chain saw to cut through tree branches that fell on the road during a severe thunderstorm the night before.

As if everything wasn’t already set for the beginnings of a great horror movie, when we got to the campsite, it looked like we weren’t the only ones there. There was a beat up tarp used as a tent and there was garbage everywhere including open sardine cans in the fire pit. We actually…

Canines and their relatives have long had their place in the folklore of the world; from the classic werewolf to the tanuki of Japanese myth and Celtic mythology is no different. In this case, mythological beasts tend to run in the circles of the faerie or the far beyond as ghosts.

Faerie dogs haunt the crossroads where the barriers between our mortal world and the realms of the faerie are the thinnest and most fragile. They’re said to be bright green and guard their doors quite fiercely. They say that the faerie dog will bark only twice in warning to trespassers; if you hear the their third bark then you’re doomed to die.

The Church Grim was made famous in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as an omen of death in the form of a giant black dog. The original myths of the Grim paint the creatures as a little more friendly; they’re guardian spirits tied to a particular church or graveyard who oversee the welfare of their lands and rather enjoy loudly ringing the church bells. The black dog is the most common form for them but they can take shape of several animals including a ram, horse, or raven.

Perhaps most monstrous of all the Celtic dogs is the Barghest, the legendary spectre that is said to haunt pathways and roads and preys upon those who travel alone. It can also take many forms, from a giant dog with fiery eyes and massive claws to a headless sorcerer who vanishes in a cloak of flames. Like the bean sidhe the Barghest can foretell the death of an important individual and like the traditional vampire cannot cross running water.